Friday, 25 July 2014

Medical professionals are so fond of telling us that regular exercise is great for our physical and mental health, but for a lot of us that's about as much use as prescribing chamomile tea to a chronic insomniac.

There's a huge amount of privilege involved in being able to take regular exercise. Factors that make it difficult or impossible to exercise might include: disabilities and pain conditions; long working hours; family/caring commitments; lack of access to safe or appropriate spaces for exercise; lack of access to specialist equipment or clothing; lack of interest in exercising.

Friday, 4 July 2014

Plastic-free July: this is a thing that's happening in Witney, close to the birthplace of Lashings.

It's a nice - even laudable - idea in principle, and I'd love to know if you're engaging (and how you're getting on with it) - but unfortunately as an idea it is also fundamentally inaccessible.

I take 14 pills every day as maintenance. That number goes up on bad days (whether I'm adding in extra paracetamol or codeine or diazepam makes relatively little difference). I haven't even been able to get vegetarian antibiotics: think, for a moment, about how every single one of those tablets comes in plastic bottles or plastic blister packs, and how if I stop taking them I become non-functional within hours.

Then there's the fact that I'm currently without DLA. I shop at the co-op and my local corner shops as much as possible, but making food accessible - making sure I eat - is impossible without plastic. This is, of course, absolutely not true for everyone: but it's simply
not something I can find the energy for without serious impact on my ability to do my daily healthwork, the bare minimum of self-care, and the day job that lets me buy food at all.

I'm vegetarian. I use public transport. And I use a power-assisted wheelchair and I work in clean labs that consume vast amounts of energy and produce significant quantities of plastic waste - I cannot do my job without personal protective equipment that always consists of one pair of nitrile gloves and often involves double-gloving, with vinyls over my nitriles. And sure, there is absolutely no sense in which my job is either necessary or useful - except that it seems to be what it takes to enable me to keep doing activism.

I don't know how to balance these trade-offs, and every single time something like this comes up as a campaign I just... I really just want to vanish. I am so, so glad that it is something some people are able and willing to do. I just wish I didn't feel so damn guilty that
I can't.
By all means, give up your luxuries for ethical reasons: that can be an awesome thing to do -- but be aware that for other people, they may not be luxuries, and that you don't get to make that call for anybody else.

Kat of Mixosaurus writes on content, choice and consent - "The specific content I will be discussing is sexual assault, but there
will be brief mentions of police violence, forced feeding, transphobia
and death (cancer and suicide)".

Tuesday, 8 April 2014

On Racialicious, Thea Lim explores the differences between Stories that Ally vs Stories that Appropriate, with particular reference to James Cameron's Avatar, and including reference to the historical and continued oppression of indigenous communities.